As billions of gaming hours are broadcast live, carriers are struggling to maintain high bandwidth demands and Quality of Experience

REDWOOD CITY, CA – 15 October 2015 Openwave Mobility, a software innovator enabling operators to manage and monetize encrypted and unencrypted mobile data, announced today that it successfully showcased optimization of live-gaming broadcast traffic via sites including YouTube Gaming and Twitch for a Tier 1 European operator. Openwave Mobility is the first to use quality-aware traffic management for live-gaming broadcasts. The company lowered bitrates by over 40% for YouTube Gaming and Twitch while maintaining an excellent QoE for subscribers.

Popular sites such as Twitch and YouTube Gaming have grown at an astonishing rate. The sites cater to millions of global enthusiasts with dynamic real-time streaming gameplay that utilize live video feeds. It is estimated that visitors on Twitch alone watch on average over 100 minutes of gaming video per day. Together with sites such as YouTube Gaming, these sites generate billions of hours of live gaming streaming broadcasts that are accessed by gamers on PC and mobile. This however poses unique challenges to mobile operators when compared to the usual YouTube Video on Demand (VoD) service.

Indranil Chatterjee, Openwave Mobility’s VP of Product Management, Marketing & Strategy explains: “Live-gaming streams are far more data demanding than VoD. And they can consume considerable bandwidth. That’s bad news for operators and a bad experience for the gaming fans. Operators are struggling to deal with the phenomenal growth in video – and now most of that is encrypted too. That’s another headache. For cost conscious subscribers, higher bandwidth means higher data bills. That’s where our innovative technology comes in.”

Chatterjee continues: “Our solutions can effectively manage bandwidth hungry applications, and our engineers were able to do this in less than 24 hours after YouTube Gaming was launched in August. We’ve enabled carriers to deliver both a superb gaming and video experience – and subscribers don’t have to suffer from bill shock. What’s more our technology optimizes encrypted mobile data without compromising security, privacy and quality. In gaming terms, it’s a win-win!”

Visit www.owmobility.com or contact sales@owmobility.com for more information.